Jazz News

RAC to be folded into Recording Academy

Source: All About Jazz
January 7, 2009

The Recording Artists' Coalition, founded eight years ago by Don Henley and Sheryl Crow, will be folded into the Recording Academy and become an integral part of the org's Grammy on the Hill initiative. The union of the two groups is to be announced today by Academy president-CEO Neil Portnow and RAC board member Irving Azoff. It is timed to coincide with the start of the new session of Congress and the Obama administration. RAC board member Simon Renshaw and ...

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Movie Speak

Source: All About Jazz
January 7, 2009

Learning Movie-Speak

If youre on a movie set and someone tells you, Give me two Ts or a cowboy with the Jack Lord and make sure the BG is visible as you pan and maybe well make that a one-er so just banana left, what do you do? Well one option is to pick up a copy of a new book called Movie Speak by Tony Bill, which provides a helpful guide to movie slanguage. No, not Variety slanguage the ...

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Beatles Music Pulled from Norwegian Podcasts

Source: All About Jazz
January 7, 2009

Norwegian national broadcaster NRK has pulled a series of 212 podcasts each featuring a different song by the Beatles, citing a breach of its rights agreement. The podcasts would have essentially constituted giving away the entire Beatles catalog for free. Although the band's music has not been licensed for the Internet, NRK announced on Jan. 6 that its 2007 radio series “Our Daily Beatles" would be made available as a free podcast. Each installment features the story behind a Beatles ...

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Judging an Elusive Artist by His Distinctive Covers

Source: Michael Ricci
January 7, 2009

LONDON After years of scraping by on a pittance from designing record covers for indie labels, Barney Bubbles had turned 40 and needed to make some money. He did the rounds of the big London record companies, only to be told by several executives that they had met with younger designers who were passing off his work as their own. Barney Bubbles, the subject of a new book, is largely forgotten today but designed influential record covers in the 1970s ...

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The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

Source: Michael Ricci
January 7, 2009

When Labels Fought the Digital, and the Digital Won You cant roll a joint on an iPod, the singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne told The New York Times Magazine early last year. And, O.K., I suppose thats among the iPods drawbacks. But its hard to think of an electronic device released in recent decades thats brought more pleasure to more people.

APPETITE FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION

An Excerpt From Appetite for Self-Destruction (simonsays.com)Should anyone care that in the process, the iPod has ...

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Betty Freeman Photographer Patron of New Music Dies

Source: Michael Ricci
January 7, 2009

Betty Freeman, one of the most influential individual patrons of contemporary composers over the last 40 years, and long the keeper of a famously gracious musical salon in Los Angeles, died on Saturday at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 87. The philanthropist Betty Freeman in 1997 at her home in Beverly Hills with the Hockney painting of her in the background. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her daughter Shelley Butler. At a time when grants to composers ...

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Cleveland's Ante up Audio Recording Studio Welcomes Classic Steinway Piano

Source: All About Jazz
January 7, 2009

With decades of rich musical history, a classic piano is re-born thanks to a recent purchase made by Cleveland-based recording studio: Ante Up Audio (Cleveland, Ohio, Jan 7,2009)--Ante Up Audio, Cleveland's world-class recording facility, recently welcomed a beautifully maintained 1951 Grand Steinway piano into its musical family. This classic Steinway Model B, which was originally owned by the Cleveland Orchestra, is now housed in Ante Up Audio's SSL Suite.

Steinway pianos are widely revered as the finest in the world ...

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Turtle Island Quartet Has Blended Jazz and Strings for Nearly Quarter of a Century

Source: All About Jazz
January 7, 2009

David Balakrishnan took a leap. Some might call it brave, others dumb luck. Either way, now he looks brilliant. For nearly a quarter century, Balakrishnan has taken two beloved forms of music — string quartets and jazz— and mashed them into something that is both reverential and ground breaking. Since founding the Turtle Island Quartet in 1985, Balakrishnan has led the group on a wild ride of cross-genre mutation that has spawned 14 albums and garnered two Grammy Awards. The ...

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